Political Blotter: Lawyer says Nadia Lockyer is out of rehab and 'doing just fine'

This is a sampling from Bay Area News Group's Political Blotter blog. Read more and post comments at www.ibabuzz.com/politics.

March 5

Former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer has finished six months of inpatient rehabilitation for methamphetamine addiction and is "doing just fine," her criminal defense attorney said Tuesday afternoon.

Lockyer, 41, the estranged wife of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, had a pretrial hearing scheduled Tuesday morning in Orange County Superior Court, but the prosecutor was tied up with another case and so Lockyer's was put over until next Thursday, March 14, according to attorney Allan Stokke.

Police last Aug. 28 went to the home where Lockyer and her 9-year-old son, Diego, were staying after a caller tipped them that she might have drugs there, prosecutors said in September. Officers found a tube of aluminum foil with a burned end, and when they met Lockyer later that day she showed signs of being under the influence of drugs.

She was arrested and charged with felony methamphetamine possession and three misdemeanors: being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, and child abuse and endangerment.

Lockyer went into National Therapeutic Services' residential drug-treatment program in Newport Beach on Aug. 31; the program lasts 180 days, and so she finished recently.

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Stokke said the judge is happy with Lockyer's progress and "we're going to decide what to do next week when we get together again."

Lockyer early last year had claimed Stephen Chikhani attacked her Feb. 3 in a Newark hotel room, but the state Justice Department investigated and eventually declined to charge him with any crime. As details emerged about Lockyer's lengthy affair with Chikhani and their drug use, she resigned her supervisorial seat last April.

Bill Lockyer, 71, had filed for divorce in July, citing "irreconcilable differences" and seeking joint physical and legal custody of their son. After Nadia Lockyer's August arrest, a judge ruled she could see their son but only under her estranged husband's supervision. The boy is living with his father in Hayward.

March 8

Hot on the heels of stinging comments about military sex crimes made by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at two Santa Cruz police officers' funeral Thursday, a Bay Area congresswoman will introduce a bill she says would help reform the system.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, will introduce her Military Judicial Reform Act to strip military commanders of their power to overturn legal decisions or lessen sentences handed down by judges and juries at courts martial. It's inspired by the recent case of a lieutenant general at Aviano Air Base overturning the sexual-assault conviction of an officer who had been sentenced by a jury of his peers to a year in prison and dismissal from the service.

Speier's office says a written statement from the Aviano victim will be read at her Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday by Nancy Parrish, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders. Also scheduled to speak are Susan Burke, an attorney who has filed lawsuits on behalf of dozens of victims of military rape or sexual assault, and Kirby Dick, the director of the Academy-Award-nominated documentary "The Invisible War."

Speier last year carried a bill to create a Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Council, composed mainly of civilians, as an independent entity outside the Defense Department's chain of command. This council would appoint and advise an office responsible for investigating, preventing and reducing sexual assaults, and a director responsible for overseeing prosecution of all sex offenses in the military. Though it had 133 co-sponsors, the bill never made it out of committee.